Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
Mark TwainRead
Our best built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows
Interpretation
Our most confident beliefs can still be fragile and easily shaken by doubt.
This quote by Mark Twain suggests that despite our strong convictions and certainties, they are ultimately vulnerable to challenges and uncertainties. Just as sandcastles are easily displaced by the wind, our beliefs can be disrupted by moments of doubt, reminding us to approach our certainties with humility and an awareness of their fragility.
In practice
In a speech about embracing uncertainty in life.
Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
The easy part of being an artist is figuring out the message that everyone else is ready to hear. The hard part is waiting for the proper lull to make the announcement.
You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.
To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
Tolerance once meant that we could use our reason to discern good and evil in open debate. Today tolerance has been used to call good evil and evil good.
If we make sacrifices in doing good or in doing ill, it does not alter the ultimate value of our actions; even if we stake our life in the cause, as martyrs do for the sake of our church : it is a sacrifice to our longing for power, or for the purpose of conserving our sense of power.
Yes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, thatβs what Iβve had to make the best of.
Anger is the ego's way of cloaking fear to make what is frail seem formidable.
Humans aren't as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth.
A few days later, I found my mother beneath the tree, motionless with excitement, her head turned toward the heavens in which she would allow human religions no place.
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